After the End
by vilgehkmono
Summary: Post-anime series, so spoilers. Lizzy-centric, with mentions of members of the Phantomhive household. Gen, though can be read as Ciel/Elizabeth if you want.


There's no body.

Days pass, and weeks, and months, and two of Ciel's old servants show up half-dead in one of the many overcrowded hospitals. Lizzy jumps for joy when she first hears of it, but when she talks to them, her excitement fades; they know as little as she does. She promises to return, smiling through her disappointment, and makes plans to adopt them as part of her household. Ciel would want her to take care of them, until he returns. For her, there is no other option; she believes in his survival with a child's faith, unshakable and pure. Paula doesn't have the heart to try and break her illusions, and so she continues to hope long past the days when others have let go.

Ciel's maid becomes Paula's assistant, his cook an aid in the kitchen there's something different about them, but Lizzy is so caught up in her own thoughts of Ciel that she never tries to understand why. She doesn't realize that the two of them are lost without their third part, without their home. They had been an entity, FinnyBardMeirin, fighting to protect the home they had been gifted, fighting to protect the master they had come to love despite his outwardly rough personality.

Now they've lost their home, their employer, and their third member; the two of them are like a machine missing gears, functional in part but no longer reaching full operability. They don't smile as often as before, and their energy is lacking. But, in time, they will heal. They've already accepted their losses, and will go on best they can. They aren't caught still in the brook as water rushes past, like Lizzy is. But they have loved, and lost, before; Lizzy is a daughter of her experiences, and she does not yet know how to let go, and let time heal.

It is four months and twenty-three days later when she receives the letter. Tanaka delivers it; she is glad to see him, though she had been unable to find him and assumed, with childish callousness, that he was too old to have survived and mourned him fleetingly. The letter he hands her is edged with gold, addressed in Ciel's hand, marked by the Phantomhive seal. Hope surges, peaks, holds steady in a crest as she opens it. And then it crashes in a wave, breaking on the sand; her hands shake, and dimly, she notices the words on the page have blurred.

_Elizabeth,_ it reads, in Ciel's fine handwriting, stately and elegant. _If you are reading this, then I am dead. As you are my fiancée, I feel obligated to inform you, so that you can move on and form new attachments to secure your worldly place. Please exercise prudence as you do so. Though the situation surrounding my death is likely mysterious, believe me when I assure you that there is no doubt as to my demise. Tanaka has received very specific instructions regarding this letter; that it is in your hands is proof enough. I have left you what remains of the Phantomhive assets, including the recently acquired royal warrant; it would be appreciated if you used a portion of that income to support my former servants, if at all possible. Give my regards to everyone._

_Yours,_

_Ciel Phantomhive_

She won't let go of the paper when Paula tries to take it from her; this is the last gift she will ever receive from Ciel, and as precise and impersonal as the language is, it's still _hers_. She reads it again and again, as if the words on the page will change after some magic number, as if she can find something there that she hadn't before. But the words remain, stone, immobile, even as they shimmer through her tears.

There are words on the back that she will not see until much later tonight, when she lets it slip through sleepy fingers as Paula prepares her for bed. They are not neat, not precise, not stately. They are a scrawl, afterthought, addendum.

_I'm sorry, Lizzy. Please don't be too sad. You were always a very dear friend to me. Knowing you, you're crying as you read this; don't. A girl like you is best when she smiles. So smile._

There is no signature, only a violently crossed out line near the bottom of the note that is long past readability. Lizzy will think nothing of it as she forces a smile through fresh tears (did they ever stop falling?) for the sake of the boy she loved, and when she does, there will be no answer. And she will keep this letter in a chest of keepsakes, far into her adult years when she's married to a man as golden-haired and gay as she; childhood loves die hard, especially those that end through no fault of their own.

For now, however, she will sleep with the precious pages folded underneath the pillow, and in the morning her hand will be numb, touching the edges gently. And no longer is she rooted in place, trapped; now is the time to move, and grieve, and heal.

---

I'm not necessarily happy with this, but I'm not unhappy with it. It is what it is, I suppose, and considering I wrote the majority of it during class while still taking lecture notes, I guess it's not so bad.

As for Finny, I figured that he was the only one without combat experience, so it would make sense that if any of them didn't make it, it would be him.


End file.
